DENNIS PARRY

Author biography:

Dennis Arthur Parry was born in 1912 and was educated at Rugby School. He read Classics at King’s College, Cambridge and obtained a first class degree. He then read Law and qualified as a Chancery Barrister. In 1937, he married Kathleen Arona Forbes, with whom he had two children, Susan and Jonathan. He was rejected for service in the Second World War because of poor eyesight and instead joined the civil service, eventually rising to the post of Permanent Under-Secretary to the Minister for Coal Production. After the war, his marriage collapsed, and following a divorce, Parry married his second wife, Audrey Dockerill, with whom he had one son, Mark.

Parry published his first novel, Attic Meteor (1936) at age 24, and would go on to publish nine others. None of these books achieved large sales, though they generally earned good reviews. An obituary in the Times characterized Parry’s works as “entertaining on the surface, and written in an easy, forceful prose . . . continuously witty rather than comic, and penetrating rather than profound. . . . All his books are enjoyable, and almost all successful within the limits which Parry set himself.” His final book, Sea of Glass (1955), was probably his most successful, earning widespread critical acclaim and running into a second edition. Unfortunately, the book’s modest success was overshadowed by Parry’s death shortly after its publication; he was severely injured in a car accident in June 1955 and died two days later at age 42.

TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership." - Times Literary Supplement